Teenager uses sign language to communicate with blind and deaf man during flight

A 15-year-old is being widely praised for an act of kindness during a cross-country flight.

Clara Daly was traveling with her mother Jane from Boston to Los Angeles on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this week. During the six-hour flight that included a layover in Portland, Oregon, Clara volunteered her skills in sign language to help a blind and deaf man by forming letters with her fingers while he “read” them with his hands.

Clara told CNN a flight attendant asked on the plane’s speaker whether anyone knew sign language. The teenager, who has been studying American Sign Language communication techniques and says she has “always been fascinated by sign language,” pressed the call button to ring a flight attendant.

The flight attendants were looking for someone who could communicate with Tim Cook, a blind and deaf man who was on his way to Portland after visiting his sister in Boston.

“I went to [Cook] a total of three times, once to get him water, another to tell him the time, and the last hour of the flight to just talk to him,” Clara said.

During their conversation, in which Clara had to sign each letter in every word so that Cook could feel her hands, the teenager learned about Cook’s past as a salesman, and he asked her about her life.

“We talked about our family in Massachusetts and he asked me about my plans for my future,” Clara said.